At length, in consequence of another upheaval of the land, the gravel-bed (a) was left high and dry; and then a wide river, guided no doubt in its course by a depression caused in this upheaval, swept across the plain. Whence it came and whither it flowed we cannot even conjecture; but we may suppose that its remote springs lay in hills far distant from those shores; for this country was then part of a great continent which extended we know not how far, into the Atlantic. Very different must this river have been from the peaceful stream which now winds its unobtrusive way through the water-meadows; for in course of time it completely swept away the old gravel-bed (a), worked its way down through the Tertiary Strata (b), and lined the valley from side to side with debris (e), brought down by its tributaries from the adjacent country. A similar process went on at the same time over a very extensive area; and there is reason to believe that most of the Wiltshire valleys owe their origin to the river action of the same epoch; for the gravelly drift which many of them contain, abounds with organic remains of precisely the same character as those found in the valley beds of the Kennet and the Thames. Bones of huge mammoths, far exceeding in size any existing elephant -remains, too, of the hippopotamus, cave tiger, rhinoceros, auroch, bear, hyena, ox, horse, rein-deer, stag and wolf, are embedded here and there in the low level gravel over the whole area of the drift deposit; and from the fact that they seldom bear traces of attrition, and could not therefore have been drifted hither from any distant land, it may be inferred that the animals to which they belonged lived and died on the banks of the wide rivers, which once filled those valleys. The climate at the time is supposed to have been much colder than it is at present, for indications have been found of contemporaneous glacial action amongst the mountains of Wales and Scotland; and though the testacea of the period are mostly identical with our present land and river shells, there are certain species amongst them which now exist only in the Arctic regions. Some of the mammalia, too, such e.g. as the auroch, bear, and reindeer, are animals found at the present time only in northern climes; and the mammoth, which in

those remote ages was probably as common in the forests of this country as the modern elephant is in Central Africa, is well known to have been a characteristic inhabitant of high latitudes. How the hippopotamus -a creature which is now met with only in rivers warmed by a tropical sun, contrived to live in a climate congenial to mammoths and rein-deer, and in rivers which were probably sometimes laden with ice-floes, is a question not easily solved. But the fact itself, that those animals did co-exist here during the drift period, cannot be disputed; for their bones have not only been found embedded in the same gravel, but lying side by side in many limestone caverns, where hyenas and other ravenous beasts were wont to devour their prey. In course of time the mighty river which deposited the low level gravel seems to have shrunk rapidly, if not suddenly, to its present bed. Perhaps its supplies were abruptly cut off by the great convulsion which rent England from the mainland, and thenceforth the attenuated stream precipitated alluvium instead of gravel, spreading widely over the valley a layer of mud or sand whenever it overflowed its banks. A dense jungle soon sprung up in the swampy parts, and the drainage became choked to a great extent between Hungerford and Reading. The result is a bed of peat from two to twelve feet deep, from a quarter of a mile to half a mile in breadth, and about sixteen miles in length, interstratified sometimes by seams of clay and mud, and covered with one or two feet of alluvium. Remains of the oak, willow, alder, fir, hazel, and birch, are found in the peat; but the bulk of it seems to have been formed not so much by trees and brushwood as by a plant commonly called bog-moss, (sphagnum palustre) and other kindred plants. Dr. Buckland tells us that it is much intermixed with minute crystals of selenite and a small quantity of carbonate of lime. The economical value of the peat has much lessened of late years, though the value of it is still considerable. At one time it was sold extensively for fuel. It is now chiefly sold in the form of ashes at 23d. a bushel, as a fertilizer for green crops. One of the most productive pits is at Speen, where £210 1 Trans. Geol. Society, 2nd series, vol. ii.

Those ashes were analyzed by Sir H. Davy, and found to be composed of

an acre is paid for it to the landowner, and upwards of 10,000 bushels are annually sold. Generally layers of clay and marl alternate with the peat, as in the following section of a cutting S.W. of Thatcham Station.

WATER

Fig. 4. Section in the Alluvium of the Kennet, S. W. of Thatcham Station.

But sometimes we find vertical masses of peat in the midst of shell-marl as shown in the following, sketch of alluvium at Hoe Benham Marsh 4 miles west of Newbury.

Fig. 5.-Sections in the Alluvium of the Kennet west of Newbury.
a. Soil.

b. Shell-marl.

c. Peat.

About 50 varieties of land and fresh-water shells are found in

A list of them is given by Professor Jones, in his "Lecture on the Geological History of Newbury."

the peat, all of existing species, and also bones of the following

Unfortunately but little interest has been taken until recently in the discovery of those fossils, so that very few have been pre

of shells and wood found in the alluvium. There is also in the

In the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1757, p. 109, there is "an account of the peat-pit near Newbury, in an extract of a letter from John Collet, M.D., to the Bishop of Ossory," in which the writer says "a great many horns, heads, and bones of several kinds of deer, the horns of the antelope, the heads and tusks of boars, the heads of beavers, &c., are also found in it; and I have been told that some human bones have been found, but I never saw any of these myself, though I have of all the others. But I am assured that all these things are generally found at the bottom of the peat."

2 Professor Owen in speaking of jaws and teeth of the Castor Europaus (beaver) found twenty feet below the present surface in the Newbury peat valley, says "The section of the valley at this part disclosed, first, two feet of alluvium, then eight feet of a shell marl, next ten feet of peat, then a second deposit of shell marl containing fresh-water shells of existing species; and in this stratum the beaver's bones were found associated with remains of the wild boar, roebuck, goat, deer, and wolf." British Fossil Mammals and Birds, p. 193. In the time of Giraldus, at the end of the 12th century, the beaver still existed on the river Tivy near Cardigan, and also in Scotland. "Inter universos Cambriæ seu etiam Llægriæ fluvios, solus hic castores habet; in Albania quippe, ut fertur fluvis similiter unico habentur sed rari," lib. ii., cap. 3. Pennant cites a passage from the "Leges Wallica," or the Laws of Howel the Good, a document of the 9th century, which shows, however, that three centuries

possession of Mrs. Padbury of Speenhamland, a remarkably fine specimen of some bones, horn-cores, and skull of the Bos primigenius. An account of it, written in 1839, is thus given in the

History of Newbury, p. 141, "A few years since was dug out of the peat in Ham Marsh in good preservation, the head and horns before the time of Giraldus the beaver had become very scarce. Those laws regulated the price of skins, and valued that of the martin at 24d., those of the ermine, otter, wolf, and fox, at 12d. each; but the beaver's (Llosdlydan, the broad-tailed animal) at 120d. Beavers' skins, says Pennant, "seem to have been the chief finery and luxury of the days of Hoel Dda." Tours in Wales vol. ii., p. 300.

May we not owe the peat of the Kennet valley in great measure to obstructions to the natural drainage caused by beaver's dams?